


An Art, Like Everything Else

by antivalentine



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Episode: s02e13 Exit Wounds, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-19
Updated: 2008-04-19
Packaged: 2018-02-06 15:26:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1862853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antivalentine/pseuds/antivalentine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><cite>Exit Wounds</cite> to the tune of <a href="http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/lady-lazarus">Lady Lazarus</a>, with a sprinkling of timey-wimey stuff and a soupcon of Jack/Ianto at the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Art, Like Everything Else

**{...I was ten. / It was an accident.}**

_You go through this. You endure this. Because of Gray. This is your punishment. For Gray._

Clod after clod of dry, loamy soil hitting his body. The moment the light disappears is almost worst. When the first-century sun ceases to be a faint presence in the chinks, diminishing with every shovelful. When there is only earth. When it all goes dark.

 _Here we go_. Already he's lightheaded with lack of oxygen. The soil fills his mouth like old potatoes. He's drowned enough to know it's best done quickly. Gulp down what air there is, gulp down whatever it is you shouldn't be breathing -- water, gas, smoke, earth, the principle's the same. Let the pain burn through your lungs until oblivion is a release.

_You deserve this. You let him go._

And back, springing back into the pain like a bungee jumper reaching the end of his rope. And up. And down. Dizzy and sick.

_The kid was chained to corpses. One thing you had to do. One thing. Keep hold of his hand._

He grips the ring. It's OK. It's not permanent. John's no fool, he'll have made damn sure to bury him somewhere that's not going to be concreted over. He'll find his way back, he'll do what has to be done.

In the meantime, this. This is what he has to go through. The obstinate body fighting for breaths which just aren't there. Only earth. Only powdered rock and the remains of other dead things, rotted away and digested by worms...

_Shit, Gray. Isn't this enough? You're my brother. I never meant..._

By the time the charms of martyrdom have worn off, the deaths are coming too quickly for madness to set in.

 

 

**{I do it so it feels real}**

He oscillates between life and death like a pendulum. The body does its work of sleeping and waking, dying and regenerating, at a pace his consciousness can't follow. Like clicks that follow so fast upon each other that they merge into an indistinct hum. Or the way a screen of alternating black and white dots passes for unbroken grey.

Sometimes there will be movements, disturbances in the earth that open up tiny air pockets. Enough for a moment of consciouness, a moment of disorientation, before the agony returns, before thought is snuffed out like a candle.

Time is a deeply peculiar thing. Everyone has hours that feel like minutes and hours that feel like days. So if a century should pass in a second, it's not a miracle, only relativity.

Not that relativity actually applies to him anymore. Time is something that flows around him; he doesn't move within it. He is the still point in a turning world. A singularity.

What wonder that the presence of such an object should tear the fabric of time and space? Not that the generations walking and skipping and dying and decaying on top of him are troubled by what lies beneath them. Not the trees reaching down their roots. Not the worms at the all-you-can-eat buffet. Not even Jack, the eye of the hurricane, lost in grey.

 

 

**{It's easy enough to do it in a cell.}**

When the light hits his eyes and he comes spluttering back to life it's impossible to say how long it felt like. An hour? A night? A week? It's like trying to judge the depth of the sea when you're standing on top of a hill.

If nothing else, it's a relief to shower, to brush his teeth; even if the toothpaste of this particular era is still pretty much baking soda and he's constantly on edge, terrified he's going to walk in on himself. He won't rest until he's safely stowed away in the freezers and the clock can start ticking again.

And there's no chance they can concrete over him now. Not that he didn't trust John. Not that he had any choice but to trust John. Nonetheless it is comforting not to be entirely dependent on his knowledge of Cardiff's geography. And he's where he needs to be. He's shaken, slightly, by the extent to which John came through. It should make him happier than it does.

The box they've chosen? That unlabelled one which nobody is ever, ever to open, not even for stocktaking. Now he realises why he never remembered writing that memo, realises that he'd better do it now, quickly, in case he shows up.

Time, he thinks, not for the first time, is a deeply peculiar thing.

When the door slams shut he takes a deep breath. Here is all whiteness, all cold. This is what Gray needs too. Suspended animation. A resting place, beyond pain, outside death. Peace. Escape. _I forgive you_.

 

 

**{And I eat men like air.}**

'You were buried? Under Cardiff? For two thousand years?'

'Well, a shade under nineteen hundred, but what's a century between friends?'

'That is not funny,' says Ianto, pale. 'Tell me what really happened.'

'Look at me. Would I make that shit up?'

'Possibly.' Ianto's eyes search his. 'But you can't die. You can't die, Jack...'

'I can.' Jack corrects him gently. 'It's staying dead that doesn't work.'

'So you were buried alive. For two... for nineteen hundred years. You can't...' Ianto shudders. 'Nobody could survive that. Your mind would go, even if your body didn't. And yet you're here...'

Jack kisses him before he can say anything else. Jack kisses him before Ianto's horror can drag his thoughts back into the grave, kisses him to get rid of the taste of soil and baking soda, kisses him to take away the image of Toshiko's lifeless eyes and of Gray's, dead in a different way. He kisses him to be alive, since they are both more than aware that sex is the standard antidote to death; that the only way to get through the long, grieving, guilty hours to come is to bury themselves in each other, gulping flesh as if it were oxygen, to bring oblivion closer.  



End file.
